In This Article:
While not a mind-blowing move, it is good to see that the Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) share price has gained 23% in the last three months. It's not great that the stock is down over the last year. But at least it bettered the loss of 22% in its market.
Since shareholders are down over the longer term, lets look at the underlying fundamentals over the that time and see if they've been consistent with returns.
See our latest analysis for Booking Holdings
While markets are a powerful pricing mechanism, share prices reflect investor sentiment, not just underlying business performance. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.
During the last year Booking Holdings saw its earnings per share increase strongly. The rate of growth may not be sustainable, but it is still really positive. So we are surprised the share price is down. Some different data might shed some more light on the situation.
Booking Holdings' revenue is actually up 74% over the last year. Since we can't easily explain the share price movement based on these metrics, it might be worth considering how market sentiment has changed towards the stock.
The graphic below depicts how earnings and revenue have changed over time (unveil the exact values by clicking on the image).
We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. You can see what analysts are predicting for Booking Holdings in this interactive graph of future profit estimates.
A Different Perspective
While it's never nice to take a loss, Booking Holdings shareholders can take comfort that their trailing twelve month loss of 16% wasn't as bad as the market loss of around 22%. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 2%, each year, over five years. In the best case scenario the last year is just a temporary blip on the journey to a brighter future. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Booking Holdings .
Booking Holdings is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.